Houston, We Have So Many Problems
by DarkHorseBlueSky
Summary: Five alien kids are destroying my apartment. Or — four. They just did the glowy thing again and turned into a giant killing machine. Just...please. Help me. Please. [OC-centric — my sincerest apologies. ABANDONED]
1. Goodnight Rocks

Normally it's not a great idea to pick up strange shoeboxes out of dorm Dumpsters, and college sophomore Max Albus can support that. 0 out of 10 does not recommend. There could be illegal drugs or bombs or magical alien children from outer space in the form of semiprecious stones or just meaningless college-kid junk that makes you feel like you wasted your time even _looking_ at it.

It was a November Friday midnight and he was cold.

His red bike — he got it when he was thirteen and had named it Joe — was on its last legs, or should he say, last wheels. The gears wouldn't change and his brakes shrieked. He was crunched in the seat with his puffy winter coat drawn up around his neck and lower face; his blue beanie pulled tightly over his springy brown hair and ears. If you got close to him you would smell fryer grease. You might also hear the tinny ringtone and vibration of an ancient phone in his back jeans pocket, but as he was riding over the bumpiest sidewalks on campus and his mind in the clouds, it went unnoticed.

Just as Max crossed the third-to-last intersection until home, a snow-laced gust of wind ripped through the air and forced him deeper into his coat, struggling to conserve what little body heat was left in him. His chapped lip caught on the zipper.

Then, just around a corner into an alley about thirty feet away, his squinting eyes caught a flash of light so bright it almost made him fall off his bike.

No one else was around to see it, except for some drunk guy across the street who yelled out his window "CASHEWS ARE A HEALTHY SNACK" before falling backwards out of sight. _He_ probably wouldn't be of any assistance. Being the brave inquisitive soul that he was, Max coasted and shrieked to a stop in front of said alley. The tenants of the dormitory buildings on either side hadn't seemed to notice anything unusual, so Max vaulted over the low gate.

It was just the normal twixt-dorm alley, really. A little cleaner because the trash was always collected on Mondays and today was Wednesday, but already bulbous black bags and miscellaneous Styrofoam things had begun to accumulate in and around the green containers. His sneaker accidentally kicked an empty soda can and it scattered, clattering against the asphalt and eventually rolling to a stop against a shoebox set in the absolute middle of the alley.

 _Well, this was a great waste of time,_ Max realized suddenly, shrugged his shoulders and turned around to ride home and go to sleep and do just the normal things that he'd prepared to do tonight.

Except that he didn't, because he realized another thing. Shoeboxes don't just put themselves in the direct center of anything and even if someone had put it there, it should have blown away in the wind if there wasn't something in it.

So he did the regrettable thing. He knelt and lifted the lid.

There was a lot of tissue paper, for one, but in the center at it all — five stones. Each about the size of a tennis ball. None of them diamonds or anything, just rocks that looked like they'd been plucked right from an overpriced overrated museum's gift shop. An opaque green one with light streaks through it; probably jade. A red one carved like a half circle sealed in a plastic bag with a triangular blue one; he couldn't really tell what they were. A circular yellow one faceted into a triangle — topaz? — and a rounded piece of reddish amber. All in pretty good condition besides being really cold.

Max shrugged and slipped the stones into his jacket pocket. They weighed heavily and clacked against each other dangerously, so he hastily moved the red, blue and green to the other pocket before scooping his phone up — it had started to ring frantically (again).

But he'd barely had time to lift it to his ear before his entire head was blasted back by a thundering voice.

 ** _"_** ** _WHERE ARE YOU?!"_**

The wind ripped through the alley just then, encouraging Max to turn back to his bike and get moving again. Gingerly he held the phone with his left hand and took the handlebars with his right, a bit wobbly to begin with but eventually getting up to speed. Yes, it did take him that long to craft a response.

"I had _work_ tonight, Chelle. I'm coming home now. What's going on?"

Rachel Jackson's voice was muffled and distant for a while, like she was yelling at other people. Probably was. Then she came back in the usual fire and thunder, causing Max to gently pull the phone away from his ear again. " _OOOOOOOOO-KAAAAAAY. So WHAT can we learn from this experience, I'll have to ask? That police NEVER do their jobs right. Obviously. I give 'em your number; is it SOOOO much to ask that a call at least GETS to you?"_

There was a sinking feeling in Max's chest just then, similar to the sinking you'd feel if you learned that the boat you're sitting in is actually sinking. "Did someone break into my place again?" he asked slowly, not really wanting to hear the answer.

The explosions of sarcastic _"Wow I thought you'd NEVER guess"s_ and " _It took you faster than the landlord to figure THAT out"_ s told him that yes, someone had indeed.

He wanted to slow down and be depressed by the side of the road, but he also wanted to start pedaling as hard as he could, maybe in a futile attempt to catch the perpetrator. Instead he just kept going at the same wishing-to-escape-the-wind-but-suffering-from-numbing-cold pace as before and asked the logical thing.

"What'd they steal?"

" _The entire contents of the refrigerator except the milk, which the investigator said meant they might be lactose intolerant. 'Cept that's BS because it's expired anyway."_

"What? Oh c'mon, I just bought that stuff two days ago — "

 _"_ _They also took your junky TV and your phone charger, though what they're gonna do with that tip off a white crayon I got no idea."_

This was when Max really groaned, despite Chelle's creative term to describe his less-than-quality charger. "Who cares what _they're_ gonna do with it; what am I gonna do _without it?_ These phones haven't been sold for years; you think I can find a charger?"

 _"_ _Hmm."_ Someone in the background shouted something in a language that sounded like Arabic and Chelle yelled back in Chinese — linguistics majors were so weird. Then she was back in English. _"Just…I dunno. Get over there."_

He skidded to a stop just then in front of his apartment complex, a thin towering thing that seemed as if a regular building had been squished between the two on both sides of it. Sure enough a single cop car was parked outside, and the far left window of the third story was lit. "I am," Max told Chelle as he guided his bike through the front door and into the bleakly lit elevator that smelled like chalk dust. "Wait, are you even here?"

 _"_ _Nah. I'm not done with my French paper, you know."_

"Oh."

 _"_ _Sorry. I really had to split. Not even sure if I'll finish this tonight, even with Imelda helping. The cop's prolly still there though."_

The door was open when he came to it. "Yeah. I think she wants to talk to me. See you tomorrow, I guess."

 _"_ _Yeah. See ya."_

* * *

The investigator didn't stay long, or even do much. Since nothing of real value was stolen and Max wasn't real keen on wasting time or money over a twelve-year-old TV that he never really used anyway, the tired cop checked over with him once more if anything else was stolen (nothing else was; his laptop was still hidden under the cracked tile in the kitchen and there wasn't much else in the tiny apartment _to_ steal) and reassured him that she would file a report with her superiors and keep an eye out for any eighteen-inch box TVs, containers of ramen and mac-n-cheese, or Cretaceous-era phone chargers. Then she left and Max stared at his desolate apartment before simply collapsing onto the foldout couch that he called a bed.

The stones in his pockets clacked together and idly, he pulled them out to look at. He was a chemistry major, not a geology major, but he did think he knew a guy. Raj, wasn't that his name. Yeah, he'd probably know if they were worth anything.

 _Hopefully, enough to get a new phone and a charger,_ Max murmured to himself ruefully, before setting his almost dead but chargerless phone on the table and slipping the rocks into the front pocket of his backpack.

Then, too tired to even change or shower, he rolled onto his stomach and closed his eyes. "Goodnight, rocks," he yawned just before falling asleep.

Naturally, he expected them not to respond.

* * *

 **...**

 **What am I doing. Why. Why am I doing this.**

 **Okay, since you're the Steven Universe fandom, you probably should be able to predict to some extent as to what's gonna happen. You probably have a better idea than I do; I have approximately 5% of this story planned out.  
**


	2. Jade

**For those of you who followed this story with the assumption that this story has a reasonable update schedule and is about canonical, established gems — I am truly sorry and you have my full permission to leave now.**

 **It is currently midnight.**

* * *

Max's first class the next day was at nine in the morning — a general English comp course on the entire opposite site of campus from his apartment. After yesterday's cold front it had started to _rain_ instead of snow and the weather that greeted him when he stepped outside that morning was a chilly pea soup fog, unstirrable even by what tiny wisps of wind were left over from last night's tempest. Illinois weather was so weird.

There was nothing in his fridge except expired milk, which he poured down the sink drain. Max grumbled to himself as he picked up coffee and a couple hash browns from MacMillan's, cursing whoever was desperate enough to steal a broke guy's discount ramen and oatmeal.

He ducked inside class just as the professor walked through the door, and slipped into a seat of the back row. As he slipped his laptop out of his backpack the stones in his front pocket clacked together but being mostly sophomores and juniors in a morning class, nobody seemed to either notice nor care.

Until about fifteen minutes into the lecture, when they clacked again and began glowing.

Max didn't really even notice at first but when it began tugging at the top of the backpack pocket, and when its force was enough to actually _lift his backpack off the ground,_ it definitely began attracting some stares. The girl to his right tapped his shoulder with her pen and whispered, "Uh, dude, something in your backpack's tryin' to go somewhere."

 _What?_ His heart skipped a beat when he looked down at the backpack and saw, very clearly, a single outline of one of the stones. And…it was _glowing?_ "Uh," he stammered, and thinking fast he closed his laptop, grabbed his backpack and began to vacate the premises, "uh, I think…uh…take notes for me!"

And he was out.

"I don't even know your name," the girl said, staring after the slamming door. Then she shrugged, went back to her own notes and forgot about him, because this was college and not the Hunger Games. There is no room for trippy love triangles here.

Max was making his beeline to the bathrooms, trying not to drop his laptop or get carried into the air by a flying glowing rock. Was it a bomb? Some sort of magical amulet? Who knew. For one _he_ didn't really care, because he was missing out on an English lecture and Professor Gallagher was _harsh_ when it came to testing stuff that was in lectures. If he bombed English, which he was already well on his way to doing, then the scholarship would be for nothing — they'd let him in for his English and chemistry grades; would they take it away because of them too?

It was just as he slammed and locked the bathroom door behind him that the backpack literally yanked itself out of his hands, skittering across the beige tile floor. He could clearly see the stone inside whizzing around the pocket, glowing brighter and moving faster and pulling tighter against the fabric until he thought it would surely break. In a split second he bounded forward, pinned the backpack to the floor and just managed to unzip the pocket before the round jade stone zinged up into the open and knocked him on the jaw. He flew backwards in an explosion of pain, stars and darkness.

When he was able to look up again, he definitely thought that he was knocked out. The gemstone hung in the air near the ceiling, surrounded in a bright, shifting silhouette that as he watched seemed to be adjusting to the shape of…a person. Amid the spears of brilliant green light there were two little hands lifted above her head; her figure was that of a chubby young girl's. The glowing light began to clear and she touched to the ground.

She was almost completely green. That was the first thing Max noticed.

Her short hair, curled at the tips and falling in waves over one eye, was a thick mint green that matched her sari skirt and top. Her skin was darker, like pine needles. And the jade stone was _attached to her skin,_ just over where her bellybutton should have been; the same color as the one eye that he could see. It was a disinterested eye. Tired even though it seemed as if she had just woken up.

"I am going to leave now," was all she said, in a small voice that sounded very much tired with life indeed — and of course he'd _know_ what tired with life sounded like — before walking right past him and reaching for the door.

That was the kicker. Max freaked. "No no no! You — you can't go out there!" he blubbered, taking the gem-girl by the shoulder and spinning her around to face him. She looked no less exhausted by this, but didn't touch the door lock again.

Now Max was stuck with explaining this ordeal without going into gory detail. "Um…" he stammered, and knelt to meet her eyes. "So, okay, I don't know if you're aware with this, but if you go out there it could be very bad. For me. Like…it's not a good thing normally when a college dude walks out of a bathroom with a little girl like you and — trust me, even though I don't want to hurt you, not everyone would believe that. So, uh…don't, don't touch anything for now. We'll figure out what to do."

"There is no 'we'," she replied shortly. "There is me and there is someone who does not know me, nor what to do. I can handle myself."

She turned around again. Not good not good not good. Desperate, Max picked her up by the shoulders, carried her over to the other side of the bathroom near the window and set her down. "No no no, please don't go out there, not now," he tried awkwardly, looking around desperately for other solutions. His eyes landed on his backpack and the other four gemstones — currently inactive and with no strange alien girls to their names, but who knew — winked mischievously at him from their pocket. "Are, uh," he scooped the backpack up and pointed at the gems. "Are they gonna turn into magical anime girls too?"

The girl looked at the other gems in the pocket and then reached in. She picked out the two in the plastic bag, then put them back and turned to the window. "Yes. Later. May I leave through _this_ portal?"

Max's mind was racing. He _had_ to get back to class otherwise he'd miss out on the chapter 15 discussion which he sorely needed, but he also needed to make sure this girl was safe. School though this technically was, you couldn't just let a twelve-year-old walk around a _college campus_ on her own. He could possibly slip out with her and just keep her in class with him so long as she kept quiet, which she seemed pretty good at doing, but even still people would ask questions and she might start to get bored. Oh yes, he could believe her and let her go on her own way. But she needed to be safe, and he _really_ wanted to know what was up with these gems. Why they turned into people. She could help him.

"You are debating your self-acclaimed position as my escort," her high crystalline voice cut through his thoughts. He stared back at her.

"How…did you know…"

"Human expressions are the easiest to interpret. Easier than gems, if that is possible," she added with a hint of dry humor.

Hmm. Well, that didn't answer any more questions than it made. He glanced out the window. Fortunately they were on the south side of the building which meant that the only thing directly outside this bathroom was a bike path and a strip of trees. Perfect. "Okay," he looked the girl in the eye to make sure she was listening, and told her his plan. "I want you to go outside and wait in the trees. I can give you my coat because it's cold — "

"For three hundred years of my existence I lived near the southern pole of my planet, where summer temperatures often reach a blazing negative two hundred degrees Celsius — nearly seventy-three degrees above absolute zero," she put in helpfully and let him keep his coat. After a second of silence he recomposed himself and continued.

"Uh…anyway. I have an…important class that I need to be at right now so I'm going to have to let you wait for about an hour. I can give you something to read if you want — here." He didn't carry all his books with him all the time, but he did just so happen to have a spare molecular biology textbook in his backpack. It was probably ten pounds but she didn't seem to have any trouble holding it. "Just…uh…wait in the woods for me and I'll come back for you when I'm done. Try not to be seen, okay?"

The girl nodded. She glanced down at the other gems in Max's backpack, then very simply reached forward and zipped them shut inside again. "They will not reform. Too badly injured. Your worries are nothing."

Almost without thinking, he glanced down at the gem on her stomach. Jade. "You're," he scrambled to piece the sentence together so as not to sound like he was making assumptions — however, that was an impossibility no matter what his English grade. "The gem is _actually_ a part of you. A physical property that you grow from, and which you keep _on your body."_

She tilted her head a small bit to the left. "The gem, human boy," she replied, "Isn't just a _part_ of me. It _is_ me."

"Jade," Max nodded. "That's what it is, right? Your gem — you?"

She inclined her chin in response, with only a very little smile that told him he was right. "Max Albus," she had cracked open his textbook, where the same two names were penciled gingerly in the top-left corner of the inside cover. "Your name?"

He smiled back.

He opened the high window and offered to let her climb on his shoulders to get out, but she simply crouched, leapt in to the air and effortlessly hurdled through the window. When Max looked down to see if she'd landed safely, she was standing at the base of the building with her back towards him. The only thing of her that was moving was her silky green hair, waving in the misty morning breeze.

"Uh, okay," he called, trying not to be _too_ loud. "See you later, I guess!"

And Max split, again.

He came back into class breathless, one hand cupped underneath the pocket with the rocks and the other nearly strangling the backpack strap. The girl who'd noticed before gave him a strange look but for the most part ignored him as he pulled out his laptop and began taking notes again — a little jittery and definitely tense; his fingers shook every time he tried to hold them still.

So an alien girl who came from an explosion of green light, and a pocketful of rocks who could do the same thing. He wasn't doing great as for money and suddenly thought that aliens probably needed sleep too; she'd want a place to stay in for the night and the only thing he had was a couch. Maybe Chelle could hook her up with a room or something. Maybe…maybe Chelle could take them off his hands entirely, and leave him to suffer with his money problems by himself like he'd gotten used to.

Max sat back in his seat and sighed. This was certainly a problem. Bigger than his apartment being broken into. A problem that probably involved Social Services except for the fact that they'd probably arrest him too just for the kicks, and finals were coming up real soon.

A problem that excited him. He sat forward again, and smirked at the backpack full of magical anime girl rocks.


	3. Escape from Homeworld, and Other Tales

**A/N: No canon gems because even though I want to marry Peridot, I** ** _did_** **mention "entirely OC-centric" — this is the wrong story for it. Don't get mad at Stephen King for not giving Snape a bigger part.**

 **Shush.**

* * *

They both rode to his next class on his bike with Max pedaling and Jade perched birdlike on the handlebars, her small white-streaked green hands wrapped immovably around the steel. She seemed to be trying to be subtle about it but she was obviously entranced with the sights they passed on the way to the chemistry building — mouth cracked open and visible green eye wide. A couple people gave them, particularly her, strange looks as they passed, but considering that the unblinking stare she gave to any human within sight could weird out even the most apathetic student it only seemed appropriate. One girl even called, "Nice cosplay, girl!"

"What is _that?"_ she asked at one point. She was pointing at the large orange M of MacMillan's. People and cars were beginning to flock towards it for an eleven o'clock meal. "Is it some sort of beacon?"

"MacMillan's? Oh, uh, it's a restaurant," he answered. "I'm guessing you know what food is?"

In response she turned around and stared at him.

"Uh, no, apparently," Max tried to keep his eyes on the sidewalk, slightly disturbed by this. Did gems eat? Well, they had bodies, didn't they? Still, it had been a long morning and Jade hadn't shown even the slightest sign of physical needs. This also begged the question whether or not she even needed to sleep, or if she could die, get wounded, or age — something that as a former fantasy geek Max was in dire need to know, and could probably figure out; she'd mentioned that she was alive for at least _three hundred years_ and even though he might not entirely believe it, he sure was intrigued with how far this story might spin — and whether or not his escorting her was entirely necessary. For all he knew, she just _might_ be able to survive and walk around on her own; heck, for all he knew, she could probably pull an AK-47 from a magic wormhole at will and live eternally off a diet of petroleum and wizard fruit.

"You are thinking something very strange," Jade said suddenly, and turned back to gaping at perfectly ordinary things. "I like you."

"Well, that's good." He smiled, because a tiny alien girl liked him.

It took fifteen minutes in all to ride from the English and literature building to the chemistry building, a grey boxish thing by a small river. Meanwhile Max's mind was spinning all the possible ways and places he could keep Jade as inconspicuous as possible. There weren't many. In theory he could just sit her down in a hallway table somewhere, give her a book, and hope that nobody would ask questions, but it was the question part that would be the kicker. You didn't just see many green-skinned preteen girls sitting in random places reading _Jane Eyre_ or _Superelectrophiles and Their Chemistry,_ and if you did you didn't just think it was normal. Someone would ask where her parents were or what's up with your skin and she'd say one of those weird vague alien things, or someone might just tell her that they were a friend and she, oblivious, would probably follow them and she might get hurt — _Ugh, I sound like Dad,_ Max frowned. _Paranoid. Controlling. Still, it's not like I shouldn't be worried…this is a KID. Okay, yeah, at least three hundred years old, probably immortal/invincible/able to be harmed in ways not know to mankind but still. Looks like a kid and…ugh…some people, that's all they care about._

He coasted to the bike rack at the back of the building, where even for a school day there weren't many people. There weren't many Thursday classes. Or places to hide, he added as he glanced around and found nothing. "Okay," he helped Jade down from the handlebars and went to locking up his bike. "I'm going to bring you inside, okay? And you can sit by the elevators and read. I've got a few new books that I don't need for this class so — "

"There is another human approaching," Jade interrupted. She never left her soft monotone but the message was enough, and Max whipped around.

There most certainly was, and she just so happened to be a human that Max knew. Exactly his height, silver hair without a strand misplaced, a stare that — if not for basically every other reason — made him wish he was taller and out of her eye level. "P…Professor Zhang," he stammered.

The woman raised her chin, then glanced down at Jade. She held a briefcase that had to be at least half her weight and didn't even seem to recognize the fact that Jade was entirely green. "Albus, isn't it? Who's this?"

Max inhaled. "Oh…she's my sister, Jade. My…my parents dropped her off because there's a convention tonight in Genoa and we were going to go together, but they, uh, came a little early and I didn't want to leave her in my apartment. So yeah. She gets a sneak peek into college…and…uh…gets some bonus feedback on her cosplay."

"Cosplay," Zhang repeated slowly with another glance at Jade. Her eyebrows rose. "Impressive work."

"Thank you," Jade nodded politely.

Max and Jade followed Zhang inside the building, both of them silent in the obvious aura of stiffness and awkwardity that came with being around a particularly distasteful teacher. As she melted inside her office without another glance back at them, Max steered Jade towards a desk in the hallway, sat her down with _Jane Eyre,_ added quietly that it wasn't a discourse on human culture and just to have fun with it, and then slipped inside the lecture hall just in time for Professor Zhang to give him a weird look as she began the lesson.

After class they both rode back to MacMillan's, where he ordered his usual of a salad and iced tea and Jade had one package of apples. As they sat down in a booth that felt like it had been wiped down with glue beforehand, she just stared at the apples before putting them, plastic and all, inside her mouth and chewing the whole thing. She swallowed without blinking and put one thumb up.

"Okay," Max said, taking a sip of his tea in order to possibly flatten the lump in his throat.

Behind them the door swung open, letting in a gust of signature grey November air and also, two magnificently-dressed women. The leader and more noticeable of the two, a heavyset black girl with coils of hair down to her lower back, was wearing literally the oldest red sweatshirt and baggy black sweatpants he'd ever seen, but for some reason also suede boots…? Those weren't cheap. The other girl, the Latina, was intimidatingly tall, had short hair the exact shade of Jade's skin, and looked like she'd just rolled out of bed after a one-night stand with an art major — all her clothes, even her white jacket, were stained in paint of a million colors.

"Chelle, Imelda," Max nodded and smiled to them, pretending that nothing was wrong and they weren't actively staring at the alien child sitting next to him.

"Uh," Imelda's eyebrows had been lost in her shaggy green hair, "I'll…go get the usuals, if you wanna stay."

"That's, uh, fine," Chelle replied distantly and slid into the booth. Then all at once her eyes narrowed and her face contorted into _just-who-is-this-child-and-you-better-tell-me-what's-going-on-RIGHT-NOW-Maksim-Jedidiah-Albus._

But really she just sat back and said, "All right. What happened."

With a deep breath and a nod towards Jade, Max began at the Dumpster where he found the gemstones, skimmed across his current cell phone inavailability (partially just to vent what frustration he still had), and spun into everything he could remember pertaining to Jade's sudden appearance out of his backpack and into a Clorox-thick men's restroom. Just then Imelda came back with her and Chelle's food but when Max offered to give her the tldr, she held up a hand and said, "You know what, the less I know, the less I can leak while totally blitzed. Kid, don't ever drink or drugs." She gave an unstable nod to Jade that very easily conveyed that she was still probably getting over the effects of one or the other. Juniors were so weird.

"Heheh, ignore her," Chelle butted in, with a glare towards her roommate. Then she returned to smiling widely at Jade. "So, girl — your name's actually Jade, right? So…this legit, or is Max just full of crap again?"

"It's not an exact transcription," Jade replied. She seemed to have relaxed quite a bit when Chelle and Imelda sat down with them — maybe just because they were girls too. "But close."

"I mean it's not like I know much more," Max coughed into his arm. "Currently the only other ones who might know the other side of the story are dormant rocks in my front backpack pocket."

Jade didn't seem to get the cue and just went back to examining a fry from Chelle's tray. She looked up to see everyone staring at her, leaning forward and smiling a little.

"Go on," Chelle grinned, and took a sip of her coffee. "This is cute."

So, sighing, Jade pointlessly pushed a lock of hair behind her ear (pointless because there were still about fifty locks _still in her eyes)_ and glanced up to the sky as if pleading some interdimensional, extraterrestrial larger being. Apparently they didn't respond and the ceiling didn't give much help either, so she folded her hands in front of her on the table and began. "I came from a planet with no name," she said first, and closed her eyes.

"Not to say it didn't have one. But the name is long and I don't care to remember it just now, so we can ignore that. Some called it Homeworld. And it certainly was. I was grown and raised there for perhaps…a thousand and a half of your Earth years; it _was_ my home. My culture in particular taught me that to call a place your home is to step forward first in the battle cry so I did, and I didn't regret it."

She opened her eyes, but only to look down at her hands. Her fingernails were clipped short and a quiet, matted silver sheen. "I am young, but I managed to pass the entry tests and joined a research organization in Homeworld capital. I was just an intern, really. I fetched information disks, arranged files, maintained the cryogenic pods."

"Wait," Max couldn't help himself — she'd mentioned cryogenics. "What kind of research, exactly?"

A short breath. She was hesitating. "Gems have a special ability," she explained slowly. "Since our forms outside of our core stone lack permanence, we are able to meld or fuse our bodies with other gems. It results in a unified, oftentimes much larger and physically stronger entity — an incredible advantage in combat against lesser, solid enemies. Even to us gems though, the exact mechanics and intricacies of fusion are largely unknown and vary among individuals, pairs and groups. It depends on the relationship, oftentimes — strong bonds between gems lead to stronger fusions which stay together longer. Our question in our research was, 'How can we strengthen fusions between gems that are not as close, such as between soldiers who may not know each other well?'"

She glanced around the table. Max was still staring intently and nodded for her to go on, Chelle had one hand over her mouth and half-closed eyes, and Imelda looked as if she had just been knocked upside the head. "You still have the others," Jade turned to Max and glanced down at the backpack in between them.

"Huh? Oh, yeah." He unzipped it and, a lot more carefully than when he'd first put them in, laid the four remaining rocks on the table. Jade took the two in the plastic bag and laid them out separately.

"It was a very young gem who found a potential answer, one not much older than I. Do you see these two gems here?" She ran her index finger down the hypotenuse of the clear triangular blue one, which was rounded off by a silverish rim. The half-circle one, which had been in the Ziploc bag with the blue one, had a similar band. Along the straight edge the metal was a little rougher and seemed to have been fractured just down the middle. For some reason, when Max picked it up and hefted it in his palm, it was warm as if he'd been holding it for a long time. Which he certainly hadn't.

"Titanium," he murmured after a while. "I…think. I'm not great with metals."

"No. You are right," Jade answered, with absolutely no enthusiasm. She sounded like Professor Zhang — just printing out facts page by page, sentence by sentence. "We tried several other methods, such as a light coating over the gem or setting it into a plate, but these had their own problems. However, locking a titanium, platinum or gold ring around two randomly chosen subject gems increased fusion unity by up to fifty percent, with a twelve percent increase in endurance over time and fifteen percent decrease in brainwave misalignment. For whatever reason — perhaps relating to the molecular properties; I believe _you_ study chemistry, Max Albus, so you or your stoic teacher might have a hypothesis — but the results improved if the test subjects were first contained in colder temperatures."

She set the blue ringed gem down in the center of the table. "These two gems," she said, "were the two constituents of our second successful titanium fusion. They were fused when the accident happened and forcefully tore their bands apart, so that's why they're a bit fractured. I might be able to smooth them down again if they don't regenerate."

"What do you mean _regenerate?"_ Chelle cut into the story for the first time so far. She'd gone from _heck yeah_ to _what the heck_ really fast, and seemed to descend deeper into the levels of heck as Jade opened her mouth and continued.

"I can only assume humans do not have this ability, as you have no gem in which to retreat with your physical form and no way to quickly heal from injuries, but please note that I know little about you and mean no insult. If a gem's physical form acquires enough damage, such as impalement or extreme amounts of pressure, she can automatically withdraw her body into her gem to rebuild it. These gems and formerly I are still in that dormant phase, but they may take longer due to the difference in damage attained in the accident versus the damage I acquired during my escape from Homeworld. What you saw in your human 'bathroom', Max Albus, was my regeneration.

"But that was it. An accident happened at the facility and many gems were poofed or cracked, and since I was the only one to walk out on my own two legs, the Management decided that I had to be the one responsible. The nearest ship was bound to this planet and somehow I still held four lifeless gems and somehow, this happened. I landed in the middle of your village, retreated into my gem and now I am here, with you."

Max wasn't sure if it was just him or what, but Jade seemed to have rushed the last part and looked a little darker green than before. "That's it?" he prompted. He hefted the red half-moon stone to his other hand; it _was_ getting hotter. "Who are the others? Do you know?"

Jade slipped the red stone out of his hand and placed it next to the blue one, so their collective shapes formed almost a teardrop. "I'm not sure. She — " she gestured to the triangle-faceted yellow gem " — was just a visitor to the lab, a reporter I believe. And she was one of the researchers." Towards the amber stone now.

"Okay, wow." Imelda's jaw was open. "You're really not making this up, are you?"

Chelle elbowed her, which judging by the quick look of pain across her face hurt the attacker more than the attacked. Mel _was_ really bony. "Haha, yeah," Chelle breathed, but only half her heart was in it. "Of course he is. Gem aliens. Who speak English. Real funny, guys. Great cosplay and awesome worldbuilding — almost had me for a second actually…hahah…uh…"

Jade wasn't laughing. Neither was Max. In fact, she was sitting there as stone-faced as usual and he threw his hands in the air. "Oh yeah, Maksim," he rolled his eyes at himself, which was a hard task considering that he couldn't even see his own eyes performing the action. "What, you sit down and expect them to _believe_ this? _Great_ idea, wasn't it…"

"You _weren't_ kidding…" Chelle sat back and exchanged glances with Imelda, who was still bug-eyed and gripping her coffee like a life preserver. "…you're crazy."

"I'm not," Max muttered. But he didn't even really believe it. He looked at Jade again…it couldn't be skin paint, it had shades and oddly colored spots just like real skin and would have rubbed off at least a little by now; her hair was just too _real_ to be dyed or a wig. Except that he _did_ know cosplayers who could do stuff like this and…well…

He had been under a lot of stress lately, what with losing his phone and with classes and work and…

"Am I?"

Jade met his eyes. Hers were a shade of green to bright to be natural, yet too dim for someone who looked her age. "No. Only doubting. Look, a signal with which to solidify your thoughts."

She pointed at the center of the table. One of the gems was, very conveniently, glowing.

It barely had time to lift two feet into the air before it exploded in a ballooning cloud of light and a very stout red child landed on the table, eyes wide. Chelle jumped, Imelda swore, Max yelped a little bit, and Jade did absolutely nothing.

"Ohhh-kaaayyy, that's it," Imelda said loudly when the red girl met her eyes. "What did I have last night. Am I okay. Bye."

Jade looked at her. She smiled largely, more so than Max had ever seen before today.

* * *

 **A/N: I don't know how to end this chapter.**

 **Nor do I care.**


End file.
